Muslim women owe it to America to fight for freedom, respect

Forum

Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2002

Today's Forum was written by Zainab al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a privately funded group in New Haven, Conn. The column was originally printed in The Hartford Courant.

It was the first day of third grade, in September 1980, when my mother presented me with my ''hijab.''

The hijab is a traditional head scarf worn by Muslim women who seek personal modesty in public. My mother had made one for her 9-year-old daughter, and for the first time I appeared before my classmates with my head covered.

Even in southern Iraq, where I grew up, this was a strange sight. I lived in the largely secular city of Basra, and no one in my school of 700 wore a hijab. The Iran-Iraq war had just begun, and many Iraqis saw the hijab as a symbol of Iran's Islamic regime: our sworn enemy.

In class, everyone stared at me and some even teased me by yanking the scarf off my head. My teacher, a Christian, could not understand my decision. She turned to me in class and asked me to explain the cloth on my head.

This, I answered, is part of my religion. My family's religious tradition asks that women cover their hair. The hijab, I told her, is who I am.

Today, the hijab remains an important part of my identity. Everything beneath it becomes private, even precious. I feel a deep obligation to cover my hair, and make an open-minded choice to place a thin divider between my body and the outside world.

By sending me off to school with a hijab, my mother placed a big responsibility on my shoulders. But the challenge I felt as a 9-year-old in secular Iraqi society is nothing compared to the task before me today in the United States. Ever since a terrorist cell of Muslim men launched a vicious attack on America, the scarf I wear has become a charged symbol, a new kind of barrier I must struggle to overcome.

On Sept. 11, as we began to absorb the shocking images on TV, my husband urged me not to wear my hijab in public.

''If there are ignorant people,'' I told him, ''I want to educate them.''

Although some women fear wearing a hijab in America, my experience has been just the opposite: People are respectful and understanding. On Oct. 8, I showed up at work and discovered many female colleagues -- all non-Muslims -- wearing the hijab as a sign of sisterly solidarity, an act repeated by American women across the country. It was a special day for America.

I ask my Muslim friends to imagine the reverse scenario. If Americans had hijacked planes and crashed them into Mecca, would the Muslim world have ever shown such sympathy? My friends cannot help but agree that the response we have encountered here is extraordinary.

Now American Muslim women must respond in kind. We have come to America seeking safety and freedom, and rightly demanded equal respect and equal rights as citizens. Although American democracy has welcomed and accommodated Islam, the Muslim world continues to regard America with suspicion. And for too long, we silently tolerated this one-way embrace.

Whether we wear hijab or not, American Muslims face a barrier of our own creation. We have not done enough to denounce Islamic hate speech and defend pluralism around the world. The Muslim world and the American public must hear our voices. As Americans, we must work to ensure that respect for individual rights and tolerance are rooted within all parts of our community. We are all human beings first, then citizens with our own personal beliefs.

Women have not had a significant voice in the American Muslim community. Although we cannot be imams, we should be community leaders. In any case, we are mothers, raising a new generation of American-born Muslims. We must educate our children not to judge people by the clothes they wear or their religious identity, but by how they behave.

American Muslims have a personal interest in strengthening and defending our country's values of tolerance and civil rights, under which we have thrived. So much is at stake, for us and for our country. Because when and if our daughters choose to wear the hijab in public, they should do so in an America that recognizes Muslim women as its proudest freedom fighters.